13 Jun 2011

Zynga’s newest game, Empires & Allies, makes its first appearance at the top of our 20 fastest-growing games by monthly active users as tracked by AppData, just 10 days after launching on Facebook. Kobojo’s PyramidVille almost muscles its way up the list after a pronounced growth spurt started around June 5; we’re assuming some of the developer’s newly-raised $7.5 million in funding might have something to do with it.
Also notable on this week’s list is Empires & Allies sibling game, CityVille. Developer Zynga made a concentrated effort to attract CityVille users to Empires & Allies using the friend invite and gifting system in the latter to target players of the former. It’s a good strategy, considering that a large part of Empires & Allies consists of a citybuilding mechanic (pictured) almost identical to the one found in CityVille.Top Gainers This Week – Games

Though it incorporates CityVille’s citybuilding element, Empires & Allies is primarily a turn-based strategy game where players build and command individual army units in both player-versus-player and player-versus-AI battles. The game shares similarities in combat with Digital Chocolate’s recently-released Army Attack, although Army Attack doesn’t currently have a PvP mode. It also has elements in common with Kabam’s lineup of strategy titles, including Global Warfare, where players need to master resource management in order to produce army units. With Playdom soon to enter the strategy genre with its upcoming game, City of Might, we’re interested to see what each game does to differentiate itself from the others.
Look for our early impressions of PyramidVille later this week.All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top weekly gainers by daily active users on Wednesday, and the top emerging apps on Friday.